1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a process for producing a flake style food. More particularly, it relates to a process for producing a flake style food of fish meat, poultry meat, cattle meat or artificial meat which has a good keeping stability and thus neither becomes watery nor suffers from any water liberation during storage following heat sterilization, requires no draining procedure prior to the use, retains the inherent wettable palatable ingredients and never suffers from any deterioration in flavor, texture or color tone.
2. Description of the Related Art
Flake style foods which have been prepared by thermally sterilizing fish meat, poultry meat, cattle meat or artificial meat in a packaged state are usually seasoned with a seasoning oil, brine or a seasoning solution. They can be either taken as such or used as a material for preparing various dishes, for example, the filling of salads or sandwiches.
When sterilized by heating in a packaged state, such a conventional flake style food would undergo so-called heat dripping (i.e., oozing-out of gravy from flakes). As a result, the flake style food becomes watery or suffers from water liberation during storage. Further, it shows dripping after opening the container. When the flake style food is mixed as such with mayonnaise or sauce (in the case of, for example, the preparation of the filling of salads or sandwiches), the oozing-out of the gravy makes the whole food product watery or causes water liberation, thus deteriorating the qualities of the salads or sandwiches. When the flake style food is to be used as a filling of sandwiches, for example, the oozing gravy moistens the bread and thus deteriorates the inherent texture and flavor of the sandwiches.
In order to avoid the above-mentioned deterioration in qualities, it has been attempted to sufficiently drain the flake style food when taking it out of a container so as to use it in a dehydrated state, though it requires much labor. In this case, however, there arises another problem that the gravy containing palatable ingredients is discarded at the draining.
A method was previously proposed for adding a dehydrated vegetable to a flake style food in order to solve these problems (U.S. Pat. No. 5,225,231). This method imparts excellent effects such that the water liberation during the storage following heat sterilization is prevented and that the flavor, texture or color tone of the flake style food is not deteriorated. However, according to this method, it is difficult to completely prevent water liberation from arising.